Dance Central Spotlight will be a hard pill to swallow for the legions of rhythm fans burnt out on Rock Band DLC, but will suit those who’ve accepted DLC culture just fine. Cost-conscious gamers should proceed with caution because that $10 purchase price is just the beginning.

Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate is purely for the hardcore fans of the series, or newcomers wanting to finally jump in.

It’s fine-tuned in every way, with satisfying gameplay, graphics and sound that accurately represent the 8-bit era they pay homage to.

The lack of core-features, underutilization of the impressive emotions system, flawed customization and faulty… practically everything else, only emphasizes EA’s struggle to keep its promises.

Anyone who loves the Mega Man will enjoy this, and early adopters get more for their money with the inclusion of Mighty Gunvolt as a free extra.

If it can escape expectations, Runers will easily become a title with a devoted following.

Velocity 2X isn’t just one of the best games of the year, it might just be the best downloadable title exclusively available on the PlayStation 4.

Chock-full of replay value, the added content makes this the definitive edition. Challenging, but rarely frustrating, Super Time Force Ultra is a strategic run and gun.

Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair is the definitive Danganronpa experience.

Amazing Princess Sarah is well-worth five bucks if you love old-school gems like Castlevania but if you’re not into that classic retro scene, Amazing Princess Sarah will do as much to convince you of the genre’s flaws as it convinces you of its strengths.

Toast Time is fun, but shallow.

See No Evil is a rewarding and enjoyable game to play, hear and see.

Madden NFL 15 marks a noticeable improvement for the long-standing franchise.

Lichdom: Battlemage makes being a magic user feel properly badass, and if there’s a little bit of homework involved in creating the spells necessary for badass-dom? That’s just the price of being a mage.

After everything is said and done, Infamous: First Light is a solid standalone expansion to a great game, but because there weren’t any risks taken, it ends up being an uninspired adventure.

The way Telltale is able to manipulate your emotions so easily is astonishing, so it makes it all the more disappointing the rest of the episode doesn’t come together as well as it could have.

Dark Souls II: Crown of the Old Iron King is a solid expansion to an already captivating game, but there are some questionable choices that have been made.

Unless you love BlazBlue and short-burst, super basic brawlers enough to drop $5.99, this will be far too superficial an endeavor to warrant a purchase, even with its charming art design. It’s not an offensively bad game; it’s just for lacking in content and value.

The Golf Club is a bit wobbly and unfinished.

As a single-player campaign for Hearthstone, Curse of Naxxramas provides quite a bit of bang for your buck.

This is an easy recommendation for anyone that has already played through Tales of Xillia and yet another good reason to force you to if you haven’t yet.

Garden Warfare remains a colorful and entertaining experience no matter the platform and one we hope will continue to grow.

New players should choose Re;Birth over the PS3 original, while fans who haven’t yet worn out on the series’ charm should jump back in. The new Plan system and revamped battles make Re;Birth a much better game than its predecessor.

But at the end of the day, Another Perspective takes a cool little idea and executes it in a variety of ways without major hitches.

Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds is a splendid brawler.

Delivering the full HD experience, Blizzard’s jump to current-gen consoles is a flying success.

The Last Tinker: City of Colors is a throwback to a simpler time in gaming. Complex, harrowing storylines can be absolutely fantastic, but sometimes it’s nice to relax into a charming tale.

Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment isn’t just a bad game. With its awful story, tedious combat, and inexcusable translation, it’s an out and out insult to anyone who might buy it – fans of the series especially.

Metro Redux doesn’t provide enough new content to be worth repurchasing except for the most die-hard fans, but if you haven’t experienced the masterful adaptation of Glukhovsky’s series yet, fix that mistake and get Metro Redux on the double.

Its interesting polygonal graphics spawn original PlayStation-era nostalgia, but its archaic shooting mechanics feel just as dated. The campy dialogue should provide players with a few smiles, but there simply isn’t enough of it.

Blackbay Asylum is the complete opposite of a perfect game, but there’s a good brain to go with the cheesily gory heart hiding under its ugly psychopathic exterior.

While McDroid shoots for the stars with these additions to the tower defense genre, it mostly ends up flaming out in the atmosphere.

Mega Coin Squad is a fun, frantic and wholly unique action platformer with all sorts of crazy ideas and mechanics built around a clear and engaging objective of collecting and banking as many coins as possible.

Table Top Racing is an excellent mobile game that doesn’t translate well to Vita.

This magical recreation of Japan’s Akihabara District bolsters a magnitude of content and things to do, while the accessible yet rewarding combat makes traipsing through the cityscape pleasurable, feeling like a blend of a traditional beat’em up and something more like what the Yakuza series has to offer. Unfortunately, an unfathomable amount of fan-service and technical hiccups dampen the experience.

Right now, as it stands, Cloud Chamber is an impressively grand experiment that’s well worth your time and money. If this seems up your alley, don’t wait — get into it while the getting is good.

Risen 3: Titan Lords is a clunky mess of a game that fails to capitalize on the potential it has put forth. While the concept sounds alluring, and it’s chock-full of charm, it’s weighed down by stodgy design and a lack of polish.

In the end, Hohokum often seems content with simply being strange rather than evolving into something transcendent.

With enough combat goodness to satisfy even the most truculent warmongers, a variable Marianas Trench of depth in its customization and laughs aplenty, A Promise Rewritten isn’t only the Vitas latest proof-of-worth, it’s also its strongest.

There’s a lot to enjoy in Lovely Planet, so long as you don’t actually have to play the game.

While fans of 2D platformers will enjoy it, Concursion has rough edges when it comes to its slightly-unresponsive controls and overall gameplay smoothness.

Back to Bed’s main mechanics are sound and well-demonstrated, but it rarely uses its surreal aesthetic as anything more than eye candy

Sacred went from a varied Diablo clone to a Gauntlet clone, but doesn’t live up to either.

Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky is one of the finest JRPGs in the history of the genre, and that still holds true for its Steam debut.

Those looking for a truly rewarding challenge are better off looking elsewhere.

When it sticks to its best features, Metrico is a stupendous experience. When it pushes the envelope, it’s far too obtuse to enjoy.

Sharknado: The Video Game is so bad that you already knew it was going to be bad before reading anything else about it.

The problem with Vertical Drop Heroes HD is that it’s not very fun.

Aside from some spotty keyboard control implementation and limited online play, there’s little not to like here. Mount Your Friends is a wonderfully weird game best experienced with buddies.

Don’t buy this. Don’t show this to friends as a joke. Don’t even say its name out loud. This is the game that shall not be named. This needs to die an unloved death on the Nintendo eShop purchased by absolutely no one.

This is one of the best console ports in recent history, as it manages to fully capture the spirit of the original while improving upon it in nearly every way.

Res Publica gave me a reason to have a blast playing as the Dutch. It adds a fun, historically accurate story about the competition between two philosophies and political entities and asks you to harness their competition for the benefit of the empire.

When it works, Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty is a beautiful, quirky, and devious puzzle platformer that deserves a spot alongside the likes of LIMBO, Another World and the original Abe’s Oddysee in the gaming canon. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work nearly often enough.

Those seeking a satisfying, skill-testing platforming experience will love Rogue Legacy. It puts a fresh coat of paint on a variety of well-worn gaming genres and ends up a must-play gaming experience.

Only If, for all of its conflicting ideas, is still worth playing, and considering it’s free to play on Steam, you really have no excuse not to. Just try not to think of what could’ve been.

Simply put, there are better visual novels out there.

The Swapper is yet another indie coup for Sony, as it is very clearly one of the best puzzle games to come out in years.

Amid the Ruins is an exhilarating adventure and the best episode thus far. It gives players drastic choices to partake in, not to mention building on the relationships between Clementine and her party.

Don’t expect Dark Souls II: Crown of the Sunken King to match up to Artorias of the Abyss, but it still offers a surprisingly deep and gratifying experience.

Give The Nightmare Cooperative a shot if you’re bored by the existing base of roguelikes and dungeon crawlers.

The gameplay is bad. The story is bad. The visuals are bad. Everything is bad. There is no fun to be had here, no entertainment to be gleaned no matter how hard you try and scrape some out.

Unrest is a choice-driven RPG with little combat to speak of that touches on relevant social issues.

If you love the Muramasa, you’ll get more than your money’s worth out of A Spirited Seven Nights Haunting.

Super Comboman is a fairly well-made brawler that reached for the stars and fell a bit short. While it nails the light and heavy attack combo system, there isn’t much depth to it.

Point Perfect is a fun game that, although meant to be enjoyed casually in short bursts, rewards getting better and lasting longer, allowing more of the game’s crazy randomness to be experienced as a high score worth bragging about is racked up.

So Many Me is an outstanding puzzle-platformer that fans of the genre should pick up.

Terrian Saga: KR-17 is a loving tribute to glorious days of 32 bit sprite-based video games.

Cry Wolf serves as a satisfying conclusion to The Wolf Among Us, delivering on all the promise that previous episodes held.

Put on your +1 cape of adventure and go pick up Divinity: Original Sin now, because it would be a sin to miss out on something this good.

Abyss Odyssey is a quirky little gaming gem, and as long as its warlock keeps dreaming, it’s worth fighting through the beauty of his visions.

Infinity Runner has a fun, unique concept that isn’t utilized to the fullest.

If you want to have a good time with your 3DS, however, you’d be better off smashing it with a hammer.

Light appears to stick with the bare minimum at first glance, but the slick presentation, stylized visuals and memorable music come together to create a fun and pure stealth action game.

Combat feels stiff, unresponsive, and overwrought, though it captures the visual excitement of the anime nicely. If that were all there is to the game, it would be pretty average, but everything else just gets in the way.

Offering up a new experience every time the mice finish their well-deserved cheese, Mousecraft is a refreshing experience for those in need of a complex puzzle game.

Bombing Bastards serves its purpose well, which is to be a Bomberman game in everything but name — and even there couldn’t steer clear of the influential series completely.

There is some initial appeal in Squids Odyssey and its simplicity is mildly entertaining if played in bite sized sessions.

It’s unfortunate that the Dynasty Warriors formula couldn’t have been better tailored to such rich source material, as there was tantalizing potential for Gundam Reborn to be the definitive interactive Gundam experience. But it succeeds at what it aims to be: an action game full of epic displays of power and an endless supply of enemies to destroy, despite little variation in gameplay.

When Blizzard announced they were making a digital CCG, we all expected it to look and sound beautiful, and there was little doubt that it would be well-balanced, but I don’t think anyone anticipated this level of sophistication and subtle brilliance.

Though its stealth-based sniping gameplay can provide some exciting moments, Sniper Elite III is a decidedly mixed bag. Its abysmal narrative, outdated mission design, boring protagonist and weak non-campaign modes overshadow everything that it does well.

As innovative as its main concept is, Spoiler Alert abandons the inherent interactive element of video games, with only a terribly linear and bleak experiment still in tow.

There’s not much wrong with The Big Bank Heist solely as DLC, but the game it’s built upon contains flaws that carry over here (enemy A.I., general glitches, etc). Still, PAYDAY 2: The Big Bank Heist does exactly what DLC should do by expanding upon the base game with new features and challenges that can’t easily be replicated in the base product.

With new content, minor balancing and smart new formula tweaks, Drinkbox has managed to improve their already fantastic Mexican Metroidvania title.

Killzone: Shadow Fall – Intercept is a fun add-on to the base game and serves as a competent standalone product.

If you’re looking for a puzzler with a gentle difficulty curve then Monsters Ate My Birthday Cake is a good choice.

Packed with solid gameplay and a small learning curve, Blue Estate breathes new life into the dying rail shooter genre.

Atelier Rorona Plus is a charming, lighthearted JRPG that’s more open-ended than most of its brethren. It can be a little on the repetitive side, but there’s just enough variety to make it a delight in short bursts.

If you’ve been looking to get in on Company of Heroes, then this is the place to do it.

Z-run’s combination of zombies and endless runners was undoubtedly a brilliant idea. Unfortunately, the game design, fun factor and replay value were all poorly executed.

Yacht Club Games has delivered more than anyone ever could have hoped for, and created an experience that gamers young and old will thoroughly enjoy.

While Ubisoft has shown that it can deliver outstanding blockbuster AAA titles, its growing library of creative downloadable games should put EA and Activision on notice: this is how to be creative.

It might not be the most essential or comprehensive inclusion for the game, but it’s still great where it counts: pure, adrenaline-drenched, space-blasting fun.

Grid Autosport is far from a pick-up and play racing game, but franchise veterans and those willing to spend the time mastering its intricacies will find it all the more rewarding for it.

The difficulty curve is staggering, which may force you to find ways of completing a level beyond what they intended.

Although it provides fun in small doses, the difficulty quickly ramps up in a way that requires patience to progress. Hardcore puzzle fans, however, should not pass it up for exactly that reason.

It is positive to note that Sixty Second Shooter Prime is extremely tough (and well-priced), but the lack of goals and a poor level system leave little to be accomplished after the first couple hours of gameplay.

On one hand, the mechanics are satisfying as timing counters and ground passes are down to precision. On the other hand, this is a light package that contains unpolished gameplay.

When the layers of the experience are peeled back, what we’re left with at Arcadias‘ core is a sluggish brawling RPG that can sometimes lack the kind of gameplay merit needed for sustainability beyond a handful of hours.